Mr. Liên comes from a long line of farmers from Phú Thượng village known for cultivating peach blossom trees to be sold annualy on the Lunar New Year as traditional decorations. In September 2024, typhoon Yagi hit Northern Việt Nam, bringing record levels of rain and flooding Nhật Tân ward for the first time in three decades. Mr. Liên is one of many farmers in the area who lost entire gardens of peach blossom trees, having to temporary resort to cultivating shorter-term flowers and vegetables for the last quarter of 2024. In recent years, farmers have also been facing difficulty timing the blooming of blossoms for harvest due to warmer winters and increasingly erratic weather patterns.
What has climate change done here?
In this area, we have never seen any damage similar to what we got after typhoon Yagi. It caused a lot of damage in terms of crops to the families who live and work here, especially to farmers from the traditional crafts village of Phú Thượng. Back then, villagers would practice sericulture here on the riverbank, and the peach blossom gardens and rice paddies would be on the fields further inland. We used to also cultivate rice plants as we have the famous traditional brand of Phú Thượng sticky rice. As for the peach blossom gardens, in the early 2000s, the development of the Ciputra urban area left us no land for farming, so farmers had to relocate the peach blossom gardens here to the riverside.
What do you think world leaders have to do now to stop things from getting worse and to help us adapt?
Us farmers only ask governments for favourable conditions to continue our work, especially in water management. As we live and work by the Red River, we urge them to regulate rivers so there are less natural disasters downstream. This is something only governments can work on. As farmers we only know how to carry on with our everyday work, to maintain the livelihoods of our families.
Life expectancy 2023
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